Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Summary

Composition in the Universityexamines the required introductory course in composition within American colleges and universities. Crowley argues that due to its association with literary studies in English departments, composition instruction has been inappropriately influenced by humanist pedagogy and that modern humanism is not a satisfactory rationale for the study of writing. Crowley envisions possible nonhumanist rationales that could be developed for vertical curricula in writing instruction, were the universal requirement not in place.Composition in the Universityexamines the required introductory course in composition within American colleges and universities. According to Sharon Crowley, the required composition course has never been conceived in the way that other introductory courses have been-as an introduction to the principles and practices of a field of study. Rather it has been constructed throughout much of its history as a site from which larger educational and ideological agendas could be advanced, and such agendas have not always served the interests of students or teachers, even though they are usually touted as programs of study that students "need." If there is a master narrative of the history of composition, it is told in the institutional attitude that has governed administration, design, and staffing of the course from its beginnings-the attitude that the universal requirement is in place in order to construct docile academic subjects.Crowley argues that due to its association with literary studies in English departments, composition instruction has been inappropriately influenced by humanist pedagogy and that modern humanism is not a satisfactory rationale for the study of writing. She examines historical attempts to reconfigure the required course in nonhumanist terms, such as the advent of communications studies during the 1940s. Crowley devotes two essays to this phenomenon, concentrating on the furor caused by the adoption of a communications program at the University of Iowa. Composition in the Universityconcludes with a pair of essays that argue against maintenance of the universal requirement. In the last of these, Crowley envisions possible nonhumanist rationales that could be developed for vertical curricula in writing instruction, were the universal requirement not in place. Crowley presents her findings in a series of essays because she feels the history of the required composition course cannot easily be understood as a coherent narrative since understandings of the purpose of the required course have altered rapidly from decade to decade, sometimes in shockingly sudden and erratic fashion. The essays in this book are informed by Crowleyrs"s long career of teaching composition, administering a composition program, and training teachers of the required introductory course. The book also draw on experience she gained while working with committees formed by the Conference on College Composition and Communication toward implementation of the Wyoming Resolution, an attempt to better the working conditions of post-secondary teachers of writing.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

IX

(2)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

XI

1 Composition in the University

1

(18)

2 The Toad in the Garden

19

(11)

3 The Bourgeois Subject and the Demise of Rhetorical Education

30

(16)

4 The Invention of Freshman English

46

(33)

5 Literature and Composition: Not Separate but Certainly Unequal

79

(39)

6 Terms of Employment: Rhetoric Slaves and Lesser Men

118

(14)

7 You Can't Write Writing: Norman Foerster and the Battle Over Basic Skills at Iowa

132

(23)

8 Freshman English and War

155

(32)

9 Around 1971: The Emergence of Process Pedagogy

187

(28)

10 The Politics of Composition

215

(13)

11 A Personal Essay on Freshman English

228

(22)

12 Composition's Ethic of Service, the Universal Requirement, and the Discourse of Student Need